With the state budget finally being passed, local school districts are able to figure out their final tax rates and budgets and how they will be affected by the amount of state aid they have received. Both Levittown and Island Trees have received more money from the state than they anticipated in their budgets.

At their Aug. 11 meeting, members of the Island Trees Board of Education voted unanimously to reduce the projected $3.40 per 100 assessed valuation estimated school tax increase to $3.18 per 100 assessed valuation.

The Levittown Board of Education is keeping their tax rate increase of $5.92 per 100 AV, but is using $100,000 of the additional $400,000 that they are receiving to buy additional furniture and capital equipment that was needed for classrooms. The furniture and capital equipment had been taken out of the budget when the board had to reduce it following the first budget failure. The removal of the new furniture from the budget and some additional summer programs, had brought the anticipated tax rate increase down from $6.15 per 100. The additional $300,000 that the district is receiving, over what they had anticipated, will be used, according to Superintendent Herman Sirois, to refurbish the fund balance, and will help reduce the budget for the next year.

Island Trees voters actually voted, in May, on an anticipated tax rate increase of $3.21. Following the budget vote the Nassau County Department of Assessment Office notified the district that the Class I assessed valuation for Island Trees would be reduced, thereby increasing the tax rate for each homeowner by $0.19, thus making the increase $3.40.

In the school budget proposed by Island Trees in May, the estimated state aid was $8,890,000 but in the state budget passed on Aug. 4, the actual state aid to be received by the district is $8,970,000, an increase of $80,000. The school district has chosen to use the total state aid increase to help reduce the tax rate increase for residents. This is the ninth consecutive year that the district has been able to reduce the actual tax rate for Island Trees from the estimated tax rate passed in May, despite the fact that the county has reduced the assessed valuation for approximately the last five years.

Island Trees Superintendent Richard Segerdahl stated, "I feel good that the board is doing this. We'll take any extra money that we didn't anticipate getting when we put the budget together and we're not going to squirrel it away, we're going to use it to reduce taxes to help the poor guy who's trying to pay his school taxes every year because this is the highest we have gone up, the $3 and change, that I can remember." The district had to increase the tax rate by such a large margin because they approved a nine-period day for the coming school year and had to add about 16 more teachers to the staff.

The Island Trees School District received $405,082 more from the state this year, as opposed to last year, a 5.44 percent change. The Levittown School District's increase in state aid was $2,579,009 from last year, a change of 10.73 percent. The state aid for public schools across the state was $913 million, and increase of 8 percent.

Both the Levittown and Island Trees superintendents spoke about the complicated formulas that the state uses to determine how much a district should receive in state aid. Segerdahl noted, "It's very difficult to figure out the formulas." Sirois stated, that because of the new formulas for state aid, he believes Levittown is being shortchanged between $10-14 million. He added, "If they went by the formula, in other words, we add up our number of students and multiply that times all the state aid and state aid categories, we should be getting $45 million, not $31 million, and that of course is not the case. We are getting less than one-third of our budget covered by state aid, actually about 30 percent of our budget is covered by state aid and it should be closer to 40-45 percent. They don't disagree that we should get the money, they just then created this other line where they take away $14 million."

Despite this question of the formulas, Sirois stated, "What was left was appreciated, certainly. Any time we get more than we projected we appreciate it, but it's not as much as we might have hoped in a year when there was such an increase."

Segerdahl stated that he is pleased that, because of the increase in state aid the district is able to maintain their credibility with the taxpayers and not have to increase the tax rate above what voters approved in May.

Island Trees School Board President Carl Bonsignore stated, "The members of the Island Trees Board of Education were very pleased to hear the good news and pledge to continue every effort possible to keep the Island Trees school taxes under control while providing a full comprehensive educational programs for all of our students."